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Published: January 2nd 2011
Sunset
Arriving in Tongyeong at sunset.Dear Blog Readers,
Happy New Year! My nephew, Jacob, is now 2 years old in Korean age even though he was born in October! Laura and I have decided that we have officially brought in 2011 in the worst possible fashion but I’ll explain more later on…
Last Sunday, the temperature was dropping below -15 degrees with the wind chill and the river that flows through Boeun was completely frozen over so Laura decided to test it out with her skates. It was really good fun and the river itself is only about a foot deep so she now has a very big ice rink at her disposal without having to go to Cheongju! I forgot to mention last week that Chris made eggnog when they came round on Christmas Day. We’ve never had it before and I think it’s an American/Canadian thing. It’s a really thick, creamy drink which tasted pretty good!
On Monday, I was invited on a staff field trip for a couple of days. I had no idea what to expect and I had no idea where we were going other than it was near Busan in the south-east of Korea. The tour bus
PE Teacher
I think a similar pose was done in the movie, The Titanic. that we went on was unlike anything I’d ever seen. It had rainbow lights lining the sides, purple curtains and a table set up at the back for playing poker on. As the crow flies, the distance to Tongyeong is short of 3 hours but with the numerous stops and lunch break that we had, we didn’t get there until about 6pm having set off at 11:30am. The drive was great though and the islands off the south coast looked great in the setting sun. The bus driver also acted as a tour guide although I had no idea what he was saying. I also spent most of the two days feeling horribly guilty because Eun-bi and Sunny were having to translate everything for me.
Our first stop was a restaurant called ‘The Marina’ where I had, for the first time, raw fish in Korea. It’s a speciality and it tasted pretty good. It’s nothing like sushi, it’s a plate of raw fish which you put into lettuce or sesame leaves like with samgyeopsal. They also have numerous raw fish side dishes. Then came the ritual drinking (even though it had actually started at about 11:32am on the bus).
Teachers
PE Teacher and Librarian The teachers understand that I don’t drink which is great, although, there is still the problem that drinking is so embedded into their social culture that persistence is still needed on my part.
After eating and drinking copiously, we booked into our motel and headed to the nearest norraebang. It was great fun, as usual, and everybody got into it. It was great seeing everybody getting into it and the hierarchical barriers which are normally evident during work being cast aside for an evening. We got back to the hotel in the early hours and set about having a post-match chat with a group of us snacking on the food and drink that had been brought with us on the bus. I ended up going to sleep in a dorm with the science and PE teacher!
We woke pretty early to the beautiful sight of a harbour with a backdrop of beautiful scenery and the rain crashing down. It was Scarborough-esque. We were quickly whisked onto the bus to our first stop of the day – breakfast. I hadn’t had a ‘normal’ Korean breakfast until now so it was a surprise to have seaweed soup, rice, kimchi and
Tour Bus
Table, Lights, Curtains and toilet paper. fish to be served for breakfast rather than lunch. My stomach was begging for a bowl of Coco Pops but I managed to stomach most of the breakfast even though it was so completely different to the norm. I could’ve murdered an all-you-can eat full English.
After that, we went up a cable car to a view overlooking Tongyeong. I’ve never seen Eun-bi and Sunny so scared – I think there were more scared of the cable car going up than they were going down on the Gyro Drop at Lotte World! Once at the top, we had a small walk up to the top where it was quite cloudy but the views were still pretty spectacular. The disappointment of the clouds was countered by the hilarity of some of the signs on the way up to the top which I took some photos of. Randomly, we then went to a KoGas plant which was storing Liquefied Natural Gas. It was a shame that it was all in Korean because I learnt a lot about LNG and I sat on a trading desk where shipments were being bought and sold during my internship at Centrica before coming to Korea.
Unfortunately I was unable to add much of a contribution about my knowledge on the subject so I looked around bemused and interested. After a lunch of fresh muscles and octopus spaghetti, we arrived back in a blizzard-stricken Boeun.
I had Extra classes to teach on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday morning. After the class on Wednesday, the teachers that were at school had dongas for lunch but on the way home I felt very sick. That evening was a torrent of stomach churning events but I thought it was just the dongas and felt well enough in the morning to try and get into school to finish the Extra classes. They had been re-scheduled numerous times before so I wanted them to get finished as quickly as possible for the sake of the students! In true Korean style, I managed to force my way through the classes and come home to rest. Unfortunately, we had planned to go to Seoul to celebrate the New Year but in my condition it was not going to be possible.
Having fallen asleep at 10:30pm on New Year’s Eve and completely missing the midnight bell toll, I was woken up at 1:10am
Sunny
The cocktail maker of the evening. by the sound of Laura violently being sick in the toilet. Consequently, not too dissimilar to the aftermath of the New Year’s Eve Party of 2008, we spent the start of 2011 huddled around the toilet looking after each other. However, the great thing about starting a year badly is that, in the immortal words of D:Ream, things can only get better.
Tink and Laura
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